MEET THE STAFF SERIES

There is Need For Night Monitoring to Curb Energy Theft and Vandalism

 

Fadila Aliyu Rafindadi SCM Isa Kaita

CCD: Can we have your brief profile?

FAR:  My name is Fadilah Aliyu Rafindadi, from katsina state. I am married and blessed with four lovely kids. I had my basic education like every other kid of our generation and I currently have a Master’s Degree as my highest qualification. I joined Kaduna Electric in September 2015.

CCD: What is it to be supervising Service Center, can you share your experience with us?

FAR:  Honestly, being a Service Center Manager has been quite challenging and fulfilling at the same time, because we have been faced with a lot of challenging issues but as a great team, we have surpassed them.

I as an individual is target oriented and I always look at the goal and develop ways to get the job done hitch free as much as possible by carrying my team along and making sure everyone takes responsibility for their clusters and customers.

CCD: What do you consider as the most challenging part of supervising?

FAR: Managing human resources in any organization is the most difficult task, but coming together as team with strategies to overcome challenges has been helpful in cutting down our ATC & C losses, capturing new customers, separations and recently mass metering program which Insha Allah will be End to end metering on the feeder.

Our major challenge is vandalism, this may not be unconnected to nature of the area of coverage ("GRA"). Giving the fact that the people are always in doors and less activities are carried out on the streets, we records cases of vandalism often.

Serving our customers has also been our daily task; we have created a platform where we interface on WhatsApp with our customers and provide them the opportunity to lodge their complaint and we resolve them as much as possible (and we have a lot of words of appreciation and praises from them), where we cannot meet up, we try to involve the the Area Office to come in and resolve our customer issues as soon as possible.

The collaboration has be very fruitful.

CCD: What is your total customer’s population and classification in Isa Kaita Feeder?

FAR:  Isa Kaita is a band A feeder with close to 22hrs supply up until March 2022 with frequency control and outages from TCN which is beyond us.

The total customer population on 11KV Isa Kaita Feeder is 415 non-PPM, Over 2400 PPMs and 65 MD customers.

CCD: How do you ensure fairness among your workers?

FAR: We have a system of reporting where we take turns in reporting and as a team everyone has a say on how to meet our targets and obligations, we then analyses and pick the best strategy depending on the area of interest weather red DT, yellow or amber DT and green dots. So everyone has a take on what it takes to be the SCM. It has definitely helped in ensuring all the staff are carried along as much as possible; trainings and briefings with both marketers and engineers have also helped to promote team spirit and synergy among the staff.

CCD: What do you consider as your major achievement since you assume duty in the Service Center?

FAR: I have ensured that all my team members get training and re-training on the Job and that way we have captured new customers and made some separations, we also Identify low paying customers and engage them to understand our products and services as well as how important it is to pay for electricity. Another achievement is response rate has grown to about 95% from October 2021 when I took over, debt recovery of over 3 million naira, enrolling of CCG customers and through field work and monitoring we have brought down energy theft as much as possible. The map metering program has also reached a lot of customers, right now we have DTs that are metered end to end.

CCD: Any appeal or suggestion to the Management/staff?

FAR: The Management has done a lot and we expect more to be done to ensure all necessary support and enablers are provided in order to effectively carry out our duties.

 Another suggestion for monitoring is organizing security and enablers for night monitoring because most of our energy thefts and vandalism happen at night. God bless Kaduna Electric and God bless Nigeria. Thank you for the opportunity.

 

Kaduna Electric Frontline April Edition

Data Driven Strategic Decisions and Efficient Customers’ Service Will Unlock Our Revenue Challenges -AM Doka

CCD: You are one of the Area Manager appointed recently, how do you feel being among the selected?

TO: I feel greatly honored for the privilege given me to serve in this capacity. I am profoundly grateful to God Almighty and to the Management for the confidence repose in me. I equally consider the appointment as a call to service. As such, I shall give the assignment my best shot, always working towards the achievement of the Company’s goal.

CCD: What do you think are the most challenging aspect of your assignment as Area Manager.

TO: As a servant-leader, who is teachable, and with high optimism, one who sees his job as personal business, no aspect of my job is insurmountable. If I am confronted with difficult issues, I consult my mentors, senior colleagues as well as fellow Area Managers and this has made my work and life less challenging. Furthermore, as sociologist will say “interaction makes a man”.  As an Area Manager, my job is centered around managing people (internal and external stakeholders) and non-human resource. People have different thought process, beliefs, values, opinion, level of exposure and understanding, before reaching or taking a decision, one has to put some of these into consideration, not also forgetting the fact that as a leader you cannot please everyone.  

CCD: Can you breakdown in details the performance of the area office in the last 6 months?

TO: If we look at the four critical variables; collection efficiency, ATC&C loss level, Bill Distribution App usage and customers’ complaints resolution, we can say that there is marginal improvement in the performance of the Area Office in the last 6(six months). Our average collection efficiency in the last six months is 50%. We are not satisfied with this and a lot being done to further improve the situation. On the ATC&C loss level, the average is 66.6% while we have attained 100% and 98.6% usage of the bill distribution App and customers’ complaints resolution respectively. From the table above, the Area Office is doing well and we intend to sustain the tempo and keep improving month on month.

Doka Area Office is a work-in-progress.  The Area Office has been on an upward trajectory and we shall maintain this positive trend.  As a matter of fact, the Area Office have had the highest collection efficiency companywide for the last three quarters, July to September 2021, October to December 2021 and January to March 2022.

CCD: How are you coping with vandalism?

TO: We are engaging our customers more through frequent sensitization, community engagement and town hall meetings on the need to safeguard electricity installations within their domain.  Recently, we wrote letters to community leaders, chiefs, imams and pastors within our area of coverage to spread the message that electricity installations in their community should be protected against vandals/thieves and in turn their response so far has been remarkable.  For example, a vandal was recently caught with the help of community support at Kwaru, Badarawa under 11KV Rabah Road Service Center and was handed over to the police with our full participation and the individual has been prosecuted with heavy flogging at the Sharia Court in Malali. This I believe will serve as deterrent to others.

CCD: There are some customers that are not responding to payment of their bills which is also contributing to our losses, what do you think is the cause of this poor customers’ response and what are you doing to reverse the trend?

TO: To start with, Doka Area Office customers’ response on postpaid is over 70% and 100% on prepaid month on month.  Companywide, this trend can be reversed if we work strategically, using data (the right data).

Firstly, we have to identify the non-paying customers (defaulters) and engage them properly. Starting with the best they can offer as at first visit and continue to engage till we can have our energy charges collected.

Secondly, the customer who pay less than what they consume should be engaged too.  As marketers, we shouldn’t get tired of visiting our customers until they pay us what they have consumed, this will help us serve them better.

Thirdly, those who pay correctly should be encouraged.  Report has it that this class of customers are always threatened to the point they become discouraged.  For this not to happen, we must treat our customers with love and respect; because they are kings and without them, we will not be in business.

If we go by the aforementioned, we will increase our customers’ response volume and by extension increase the revenue.

CCD: Tapping from your wealth of experience what does it take to a good leader?

TO:  To be a good leader you must possess the following:

You must have a clear vision, be courageous, honest, HUMBLE, hardworking, a strategic planner, ultimately be a team player, inspire others, learn to follow, you must learn to express gratitude to your team members, help people understand their strength and simplify job roles, be patient with people, you must practice discipline, be teachable, diligent, have integrity, you must be an active listener, have the ability to resolve conflicts and lastly tell your story (sharing of one’s experience with team members) as it's often said that experience is the best teacher.

 

CCD: What is the story behind Terna Oluwabunmi Toryem and what is the most difficult decision you have taken in any official capacity?

TO: This is a tough one, but then let me give it a trial.

I am God fearing, gentle, a good listener, problem solver, smart and humble. I love interacting with people from different walks of life, more to that, I am a team player with the capacity of influencing my team towards achieving set goals and objectives. Finally, I am a sport lover and a typical family man.

Moving on, the most difficult decision I have taken in official capacity was when I had to use deduction of staff salary as a measure to curb the high rate of indiscipline among my team members in line with the provisions of the condition of service. Even at that, it still HURTS.

 

MEET THE STAFF SERIES

 

 Frequent Training Of CCR's Will Improve Our Service Delivery

...JULIUS

 

CCD: Can you tell us about yourself?

JBI: My name is Julius Bmitawuza Ishaku, Team lead Customer Care Doka AO. I consider myself a good team player, listener, reserved and shy person.

Julius Bmtawuza TL Customer Care Doka AO

I hail from  Chikun Local Government of Kaduna Stat
e and a graduate of Microbiology from the University of Jos.

CCD: What are your primary responsibilities?

JBI: My primary responsibilities are:

Receipt and resolution of customer complaints, Customer Engagement on current happenings and our processes, Updating Customer Records and Supervising Customer Care Representatives.

CCD: Can you share with us the major complaint you often received daily from the customers?

JBI: Most of our customers complaint in Doka AO office is on over billing and meter category.

CCD: How do you ensure that the customers complaint is timely resolved?

JBI: We at the Doka AO we work as a team. As soon as we receive a complaint, we usually forward same to our functional WhatsApp groups created solely for resolution of technical and none technical issues. By so doing our complaints get attended speedily. We have these groups at both AO and Service Centre level. We take load assessment for complaints regarding over billing, also reconciliation and customer engagement carried out thereafter.

CCD: What do you consider as your major achievement since you assumed duty?

JBI: I have a lot of achievements since assuming duty with Kaduna Electric. Among which are: Achievement Award - Kaduna Electric Best Customer Service Representative of the year (2017/2018). Shining Star Award, Makera Area Office (2017/2018), MD's Awards and Recognition (2017), Shining Star of the Month (August, 2019).

CCD: Do you have any strategy you use in sensitizing your customers?

JBI: Yes! I just simply listen to my customers. I allow them express their feelings/perceptions and concerns, empathize with them and then take my time to explain frankly the realities on ground and assure them we may not be able to go through the rain with them, but will be an umbrella.

CCD: How do you handle difficult customers?

JBI:  Difficult customers just want nothing but attention. So, I just listen to them and lay emphasis on what they want. For instance, a woman came in with her complaint of overbilling while having a functional credit meter. I listened attentively to her and noted down her concerns and then went through her account statement and began explaining my observations. She however wasn't willing to listen. I assured her I was going to resolve her issue but just needed her to understand what's been happening on her account. After taking her through the statement and pointing the issues observed, she completely trusted my ability to resolve the complaints made. I eventually reconciled her account within 2 weeks.

CCD: Any suggestions to the management?

JBI:  We need to equip the customer service desk with computers for easy and seamless storage of data to ensure continuity.

Frequent training of CCR's being the face of the company will improve our service delivery.

 

 

KADUNA ELECTRIC NEWSLETTER APRIL EDITION

Kaduna Electric Donates Food Items to Orphans,Widows in Kaduna

In the spirit of  this holy season, Kaduna Electric donated food items and other essential supplies to Danmani Orphans Widows and less Privileged Welfare Association in Rigasa Area Office and  Kwaru Community under Doka Area Office in Kaduna today.

Delivering the items on behalf of the Company, the Area Manger Doka Area Office, Mr. Terna Oluwabunmi Toryem described the gesture as a fulfilment of the Corporate Social Responsibility policy of the Company “every season such as this, we identify and provide support  to the beneficiaries who largely depend on the society for assistance”.

According to him, "Kaduna Electric has a corporate policy of giving back to the society through its Corporate Social Responsibility programmes. Kaduna Electric has been supporting communities within it franchise in the areas of education, sports, health, relief materials, and emergency etc.

In their separate responses, the Chiarman Danmani Orphans Widows and less Privileged Welfare Association thanked the Management of Kaduna Electric for the philanthropic gesture and promised to ensure that the items donated are judiciously distributed and effectively utilised by the widows  and orphans respectively.

However, Sarkin Kwaru Alhaji Ashiru Muhammad Wada described the gesture as timely and much needed. He thanked the Management of Kaduna Electric for their kind heartedness, saying that with this, the Company has redeemed its image among the other services within the state.

"On behalf of my community, I wish to express our profound gratitude to Kaduna Electric for such a wonderful gesture Indeed, these food items will go a long way in putting a smiles  to the poor in this critical time, i will also ensure that our community fulfilled its responsibility by paying electricity bills as at when due”, he said.

 

Kebbi South AO Visits Zuru Emir, Seeks Emirate’s Support

The new appointed Area Manager of Kebbi South Area Office Comrade Rilwanu Shehu visited the Emir of Zuru alongside with his management recently in other to introduce himself.

Comrade Rilwanu seeks for usual support of the Emir in areas of public enlightenment, mobilization of people towards payment of bills and protection of power supply installations to enable them discharge their duties effectively.

In his response the Emir of Zuru Major General Sani Sami Gomo II thanked the new Area Manager and his team for the visit, and charged Electricity users in his domain to help the Company to achieve its business objectives so as to attain better service delivery in the State. “Even with the current security challenges that marred the Emirate you found it necessary to pay us a visit” he said. 

“I must commend and appreciate your efforts, we will continue to support you in every ramification as your services are also of great significance to the security of my people”, he added.